I didn't think that Coke and Pepsi would give up aspartame because if they did people would wake up well all over the world and know what poisoned them. They are simply adding another drink with stevia and will continue to poison the world with aspartame.

The next front in the Cola Wars may be a zero-calorie natural sweetener derived from a plant in South America.

PepsiCo Inc. of Purchase yesterday said it is teaming with the maker of Equal to produce PureVia, an ingredient that the beverage maker plans to include in some of its products following a review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

PureVia is produced from the leaves of the stevia plant. PepsiCo said stevia is about 200 times sweeter than sugar. Its purified component, Reb A, is drawn from the sweetest part of the stevia leaf.

Stevia sweeteners are used in about a dozen countries, PepsiCo spokesman David DeCecco said. The Japanese have sweetened teas with it for about 30 years, he said. PureVia took four years for PepsiCo and its partner, Whole Earth Sweetener Co., a subsidiary of Merisant Co., to develop.

PepsiCo and Whole Earth Sweetener will jointly own and market PureVia globally. They will buy the sweetener from PureCircle, a supplier of Reb A.

PepsiCo will launch SoBe Life, a flavored beverage sweetened with PureVia, in Latin America this year. A PureVia tabletop sweetener that can be used in both hot and cold beverages and sprinkled on cereal will be released in the United States this fall.

Coca-Cola also is developing a stevia sweetener with agriculture giant Cargill. They also have an application before the FDA.

John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest in Bedford Hills, said the soft drink industry has looked for years for natural, no-calorie equivalents to the widely-used artificial sweetener aspartame.

Fashioning a sweetener that replicates the flavor of sugar for a mass market can be a challenge, since consumers' palates vary widely.

"Taste is so subjective," Sicher said. "Human beings are accustomed to the taste of sugar and measure other sweeteners against sugar."

PepsiCo and Coca-Cola will continue to use aspartame, Sicher said, but they see opportunities in stevia.

"There is a subset, and probably a growing subset, of consumers who are interested in natural products. If these new stevia-based sweeteners meet the taste requirement, they could give both Pepsi and Coke a whole new arena for product innovation," he said.

"The key is going to be, they have to not just be natural, the sweeteners also have to taste good," he said. "Given the research going on, it's likely they will, but ultimately consumers will make that decision."